She’s Not There

7

The pint of milk on the doorstep had already gone warm. It had a note under it from the milkman – a bill probably. Jonah carried the milk and the note into the kitchen. The mango and the bottle of wine were still there, and the ants were still crawling up and down the jug to their deaths. Raff sat down, and Jonah got the Weetabix out of the cupboard. The only clean bowls he could find were a wooden salad bowl and a white mixing bowl. Raff looked at the bowls and snorted.

‘Or we could do some washing up,’ Jonah said.

Raff raised one eyebrow. ‘No way is I doing washing up, Little Peck!’

‘Raff, you are not allowed to call me that.’

‘Who you tellin’, Dirty Little Peck?’ Raff jumped up from the chair and shoved his face close to Jonah’s.

Jonah moved away, ignoring him, which is what Lucy told him was always the best policy, and got on with putting three Weetabix into each bowl.

‘Come on then, Peck!’ Raff was snarling, his lips rolling back, showing his tiny white teeth. He lifted his arms, aiming his catapult at him. ‘Peck versus the Slingsman! Phwooff!’

‘Shut up, Raff!’ He put his hands over his ears, but he could still hear Raff saying it, and making his stupid raspberry sounds.

‘Little Peck. Fuckin’ Peck.’

‘Don’t swear!’ In a rush of rage, Jonah pushed Raff to the floor.

Raff jumped straight up and threw himself at Jonah, and they staggered through the kitchen and out into the hall, where Jonah managed to shove his brother off him. Raff fell back against the stairs, grabbing the stepladder as he went, and it fell on top of him, and he started crying, really loudly.

Panicked, Jonah shoved the stepladder away and knelt beside him. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Are you OK, Raff? Where does it hurt?’

Raff just screamed louder, like when he was a toddler. ‘Mayo!’ he was screaming, over and over, and Jonah put his hands over his ears again.

‘STOP!’

Raff stopped. They looked at each other for a moment, and then Raff slid himself off the stairs and opened up his arms, and Jonah knelt down and hugged him. They rolled over and lay side by side, amongst the shoes.

‘What’s she doing in the park?’ asked Raff.

‘Yoga.’

‘But her yoga mat’s in the sitting room.’

‘Yes, but your Ben 10 puzzle’s on it. She probably didn’t want to break it.’ Out of the side of his eye Jonah could see the yellow word on the rusty red of the can they’d filled up at the service station. GASOLINE. The American word for petrol. Closer in, by his temple, the chewed-up heel of one of her clogs. Why haven’t you got your shoes on? he asked her silently.

‘Jonah,’ Raff whispered.

‘What?’

‘Is Bad Granny going to come?’

Jonah got a flash of Bad Granny’s looming, brightly coloured face, and felt a shiver run through his body. ‘Don’t be stupid,’ he said. Raff had sounded like a really young child, which he was, of course. Jonah wriggled his arm under his shoulders.

‘Alright, me old Peck,’ said Raff, but in a little cockney chirrup, not that horrible gangster voice. Jonah giggled.

‘How nice to meet you, Lord Pecker!’ he said in his Your Majesty voice, and Raff rolled around, snorting. Jonah chuckled. It was usually Raff who made him laugh. Through their laughing came a sound, which Jonah hardly heard, but Raff suddenly sat up straight, looking wide-eyed at the door. ‘Mayo?’ he whispered.

Jonah sat up too. Raff was holding his body very stiff. There was a moment’s silence.

‘What was it?’ Jonah whispered.

‘Someone. Looking through the letter box.’ Raff got to his feet, but Jonah grabbed his ankle.

‘Don’t open it!’ he hissed.

‘Why?’

‘It might be the Raggedy Man.’

‘The Raggedy Man?’ Raff crouched back down. Jonah reached for his hand. They both stared at the letter box, listening hard. A car came up Wanless Road and turned the corner.

‘Why do you think it was the Raggedy Man?’ Raff whispered.

‘I don’t know. Just because he was outside our house.’

‘And he wants to come in?’

‘I don’t know. Are you sure you saw someone?’

Raff nodded. He lifted his arms and aimed his sling at the letter box. ‘Phwoof.’ He made the sound very quietly. Then he stood up and stretched, and pulled up his pyjama bottoms. ‘Bags the wood bowl,’ he said, in a normal voice.

8

Having breakfast in the enormous bowls made them laugh again, the way they had to reach down to get their spoons to the Weetabix. Then Raff said, ‘Who sent them?’

Jonah looked at the skeletal flowers. On their way to dust. ‘Roland,’ he said.

‘What, from prison?’

‘You can still send people things. He sent you those posters of the runners.’

‘Did Daddy give me those?’

‘Yes!’

‘I thought it was Saviour.’

‘It was Roland. Last year, when the Olympics were on. You should remember that, Raff! Imagine if Roland knew you’d got him mixed up with Saviour!’

‘Fuck off, Jonah, because I didn’t mix him up with Saviour. I just thought Saviour gave me the posters.’

‘Anyway. He sent Lucy flowers before.’

‘When?’

‘On her birthday.’

‘So why did he send some now?’

‘Maybe because she was ill? How should I know, Raff?’ Sometimes Raff’s questions went on and on.

‘But how did he know she was ill?’

‘Maybe he phoned her.’ Jonah suddenly remembered finding her red phone in the flowerpot, and tried to think what he’d done with it.

‘Why didn’t he speak to us, then?’

‘I don’t know, Raff! I don’t know anything about it! I don’t even know if it was him who sent the flowers!’

‘No need to fuckin’ shout, fam.’

‘Don’t swear! You always swear!’ Jonah picked up the mixing bowl and tried to put it in the sink, but the sink was too full.

‘You got anger management, bro.’ Raff shook his head for a bit, squashing ants with the back of his spoon. ‘Maybe he sent them because he’s coming out on patrol.’

‘Parole.’ There was no room on the draining board either.

‘Maybe he’ll get out in time for Sports Day.’ Raff examined the ants on the back of the spoon. ‘Do you remember when he came to Sports Day with Bad Granny?’

‘Yes.’ Jonah put the bowl back on the table. He was surprised Raff could remember. He’d been tiny, not much more than a toddler.

‘But it was before she tried to steal us.’

‘Stop killing the ants, Raff.’

‘Will he bring her this time?’

‘Raff, he won’t come to Sports Day. He’s not getting out that soon. Lucy would have told us.’

‘She might of forgotten.’ Raff squashed some ants with the back of his spoon. ‘Anyway, why do you call her Lucy now? What’s wrong with Mayo?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Is it because it’s Zambian?’

‘No. I just like calling her Lucy.’ She liked it too. She liked it that he was getting so grown up.

Raff squashed some more ants. ‘What about Haredale’s Got Talent? I bet he’ll get out for that!’

‘Raffy, that’s the same day, remember! And stop killing the ants!’

‘Dey ants, Peck.’

‘Ants are amazing!’ Jonah grabbed the spoon off him and sat back down. ‘Did you know they have two stomachs?’ He watched the ants reorganise themselves. ‘One for themselves, and one to store food to take back to their queen.’

‘Queen gonna be hungry, den.’ Raff snatched the spoon back and rolled it over a whole cluster of them.

‘Raff! That is such bad karma!’

‘Saviour says that karma shit is rubbish. He says everything’s just random.’ But Raff laid the spoon down. ‘You know Bad Granny?’

‘Yes.’ Jonah looked at the empty eyeholes of the mask on the cover of the book.

‘Will we know her again? When Roland comes out on patrol? Will he take us to see her?’

Shattered glass, Sadie’s crazy face, and the peacock, screaming. ‘I don’t know.’ After she’d tried to take them from school, Dora and Lucy had talked about going to court to get – what was it called? – a thing to stop her from coming anywhere near them. He wasn’t sure if they’d actually done it, though. He opened the book. It was Dora’s, she’d written her name on the inside cover, Dora Martin, in black ink, the letters very pointed, and all leaning forwards. Underneath it, she’d done lots of scribbling in pencil, words and some doodles, but no, actually it was Lucy who’d done the stuff in pencil, he could tell by the handwriting, and the doodles.

‘Raff.’ He closed the book.

‘What.’

‘What does Peck actually mean?’

‘Peck means Peck!’

‘Doh! Did you get it off Saviour?’

‘I didn’t get it off no one. It’s from my head.’ Raff put down the spoon and stood up, very straight, with his arms by his sides. ‘This is what it is!’ He made a bobbing movement with his head. It looked like a move from a street dance, but also exactly like a pecking pigeon. It made Jonah laugh again, and try it himself. They both walked around the table pecking for a while.

Raff stopped first. ‘Maybe it was the Angry Saturday man who sent her the flowers.’

‘It wouldn’t be him.’ Jonah noticed the clock. ‘Raff, we need to hurry! We’re going to be late for school!’

9

Jonah hesitated before opening the front door, and looked from side to side before stepping onto the pavement. The Raggedy Man was nowhere to be seen. There were clouds now, great billowing ones: cumulus, not cumulonimbus, so it wouldn’t rain.

‘Mind, Peck!’ Raff shoved past him. He had a toothpaste beard, his shirt was filthy and he was wearing trainers, which wasn’t allowed. Jonah passed him his school bag, and hoisted his own onto his shoulder. They scurried along Southway Street, but stopped dead on the corner, because there was a fox lying just off the kerb.

‘Violet!’ Raff cried, clapping his hand over his mouth, but Jonah shook his head.

‘It’s not her. It might be one of her cubs though.’ The back of the fox’s body had been squashed into a bloody mess by the wheels of a car, but its head and its front legs were untouched. Jonah wondered if it had died straightaway, or whether it had lain there for a while, trying and trying to make its back half work. He wriggled his shoulders to shake off the thought, and took Raff’s hand. ‘Come on,’ he said.

The bell started ringing as they went through the gate. Jonah went with Raff into the Infants, and watched him run off into his classroom, before walking through into the Juniors’ playground. It had nearly emptied out. Among the stragglers were Emerald and Saviour, and Jonah ran over to say hello. Saviour was squatting down so that Emerald could hug him goodbye, which he didn’t need to do any more, because he was quite short, and Emerald had got really tall. Something about the way they were hugging, and the expression on Saviour’s face, made Jonah stop a foot or two away and wait to be noticed. They didn’t look like father and daughter: Saviour browner than ever, so brown you might not realise he was a white person, whereas Emerald’s skin had gone just slightly golden. And Emerald was all fresh and neat in her school dress, with her long yellow hair in bunches, whereas Saviour was scruffy, in his torn T-shirt, and his paint-spattered Crocs, with bits of leaves and twigs in his curly hair. Jonah noticed that it was more grey than black now, his hair, and that you could see his scalp through it, hard and brown as a nut. His eyebrows were dark still; dark and bushy, which could make him seem cross, or at least lost in his thoughts – until he looked at you, like he did now, over Emerald’s shoulder, with his kind, interested eyes.

‘Jonah, mate. Where’s the whale?’ If you didn’t know him, you might expect a deep, growly voice, maybe with a foreign accent, and be surprised by the warm, cockney lightness. He winked, and Jonah grinned and winked back, and Saviour reached up and high-fived him, because Jonah had been trying to wink for weeks.

‘Fourteen runs!’ Jonah said.

Saviour frowned.

‘England won by fourteen runs! Didn’t you watch it?’ He and Raff had been glued to it the whole of Sunday afternoon.

‘Course they did.’ Saviour was wobbling a bit, because Emerald’s hug was getting tighter.

‘I didn’t like that Hawk-Eye business. I didn’t think it was really fair,’ said Jonah.

Saviour nodded and stood up, and Jonah noticed he was getting fat again. He’d lost quite a lot of weight from giving up alcohol, but he was putting it back on. Emerald slid down onto her knees, wrapping her arms around his legs, and Saviour staggered, and put his hands on her shoulders. He didn’t seem interested in talking about the cricket, so Jonah said: ‘Lucy hasn’t been very well.’

Saviour nodded again, looking down at Emerald. Her parting was dead straight and the bunches were like long silky ears which flopped around as she burrowed her head into his stomach.

‘She stayed in bed for three days. I made her cups of tea.’

‘Good on you, mate,’ murmured Saviour.

‘But yesterday she got up. We went swimming. Apart from she didn’t actually swim.’ Saviour had taken hold of one of Emerald’s bunches and was twirling the yellow hair around his dark fingers. ‘And she didn’t watch the cricket with us. She went for a lie-down instead. But she doesn’t really like cricket.’

Saviour let go of Emerald’s hair and looked at his watch.

Jonah suddenly remembered the wine bottle. ‘Did Dora come over to our house last night?’

‘Dora,’ said Saviour, as if he hardly knew her, but Emerald stood up and turned around, her bunches flying.

‘No, my mum didn’t come over. Because she’s really ill. She’s so ill she might even die!’

Saviour put his hand onto her pale head, and Jonah saw that his fingers were dark purple, almost black, from picking blackcurrants, probably.

‘Really, Emerald!’ Jonah said it with a smile, and a little look at Saviour, because Emerald was such a drama queen.

‘Jonah, it’s actually true – isn’t it, Dad?’ Saviour stared down at her with a strange, stiff smile on his face, and Jonah felt himself blush.

‘Mum is ill, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to die, Emmy,’ said Saviour. ‘Not for a good long while anyway.’

Emerald put on her grown-up face. She said, ‘You need to face the facts, Dad!’ And Saviour’s smile got wider and stranger, as if he might be trying not to cry. ‘She’s going to hospital this morning.’ Emerald stroked her bunches, her grey eyes flicking between Jonah’s face and Saviour’s. ‘To get her results. And tonight we’re going to have roast chicken and roast potatoes for dinner.’

‘Oh,’ said Jonah. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so he said, ‘Anyway. I’d better go.’

He moved off, but Emerald let go of her bunches, picked up her bag and grabbed his arm. ‘OK, wait for me, then. Bye, Dad!’

They left Saviour standing there in the middle of the empty playground, like a kind of scarecrow clown, with his orange Crocs and his purple hands and his leafy hair sticking straight up in the air.

10

Miss Swann had already started the Year 4 register. She looked up over her reading glasses. ‘Emmy, Jonah, you made it! Awesome!’ She was smiling, and the classroom smelt of her rosewater.

As he slid into his seat, Harold grinned at him with his loony grin. ‘Yo, fam,’ he whispered. They fist-bumped, and then Jonah looked back at Miss Swann. She was wearing a stripy summer dress with shoulder straps, and when she leant forward you could see her strangely long thin bosoms hanging down. Not bosoms. That’s what Lucy called them, but no one else did. Most people said ‘boobs’, but it didn’t feel right, calling Miss Swann’s that. Maybe ‘mammary glands’. Her long, thin mammary glands. Lucy would think that was funny. He smiled, picturing her laughing. Hers were nicer: fat and round, with puffy brown nipples.

In Assembly they rehearsed ‘Star Man’, which they’d be singing at the end of the Talent Show on Thursday evening. After the singing Mr Mann did certificates, and Jonah got one for his Broken House project, which he’d been working on all term as part of the Local History theme. All the Local History projects were on display in the hall, and at the end of Assembly Jonah hung back to gaze up at his.

The house next door to us was built in 1862, by a rich Timber Merchent called Mr Samuels. It was a detatched Villa, in a Full-blooded Gothic Style, enlivened by vigorus Foliated Carvings.

He’d copied that last bit out from the London Survey website. He and Lucy had crept into the house to take the photos, showing the ruin it was now. One of the photos was amazing, looking up from the inside of the house, through the broken roof, to the sky. He imagined showing the certificate to Lucy when he got home from school, and telling her he would share it with her, because of the brilliant photo she’d taken – and Lucy sticking the certificate on the fridge.

‘OK, Jonah, that’s enough drooling over your own genius!’ Mr Mann’s hand came down onto his back, and propelled him out into the sunshine.

The playground was a swirl of children, flying about and screeching. The clouds had all gone, leaving a mysterious blue emptiness. All the colours are there, he remembered. It’s just that blue light waves are shorter and smaller, so they scatter more when they hit the molecules. The endlessness of the emptiness made his stomach drop, as if he was falling. Then he saw Harold, over by the fence, looking through into the Infants’ playground.

‘Is your mum better?’ asked Harold as Jonah drew up beside him.

‘Yes.’ In the Infants, Raff and Tameron and their three chorus girls were rehearsing the Camber Sands rap for the Talent Show.

‘Can I come to tea, then?’

‘Maybe.’ Jonah remembered the first time Harold had come to tea, when they were in Reception. Harold hadn’t been himself, to begin with. He hadn’t wanted to play anything, or eat or drink anything, but had just stood with his hands in his pockets, mute. Jonah had been at his wits’ end, but then Lucy had asked Harold what his favourite animal was. ‘A peregrine falcon.’ He’d whispered it so quietly they had only just heard.

‘A peregrine falcon!’ Lucy had gasped. ‘How fast can it fly?’

‘Two hundred and forty-two miles per hour,’ Harold had told her. ‘Which is the same as three hundred and eighty-nine kilometres.’ After tea, on the way back to his flat, Harold had held Lucy’s hand all the way.

‘Your brother’s a boss dancer.’

Jonah leaned his forehead against the wire fence and watched. A crowd had gathered around Raff and Tameron and were joining in at the chorus. ‘Ooh, Smelly Shelly! Uh, Smelly Shelly!’

‘Who is Smelly Shelly anyway?’ asked Harold.

‘It’s a shell. They found it on the beach, when they went on the school trip.’

‘A shell!’

‘Yep.’

‘Did they make up all those words themselves? I bet your mum helped them.’

‘A bit.’ Her face came into his head, and he wondered if she was back in the house yet. ‘Saviour helped more. He thought of lots of the rhymes.’

‘Emerald’s dad?’

‘Yep.’ Jonah leaned more heavily onto the fence, feeling the wire digging into his forehead.

‘I think they’ll win. Do you?’

‘I dunno.’ Jonah pictured Raff’s face, glowing with triumph; Lucy’s face, in the audience, crying probably. Crying and clapping. He smiled.

‘Why are you smiling? Do you want them to win?’

Jonah slid his eyes towards Harold, who was inspecting him, his eyes tiny because of his thick glasses, his cheek resting on the wire. ‘Is there even going to be a winner?’ he asked. ‘I thought it was more – just a show.’

‘Well, if there is a winner, it should be them.’ Harold looked back at Raff, who had started breakdancing. He shook his head. ‘You might be Gifted and Talented, fam, but your brother’s boss at everything. He’ll win all the Sports Day races.’

Jonah shrugged. He rocked back onto his feet, and felt the grooves the wire had left with his fingertips. ‘You know the universe?’ he said.

‘Yes.’

‘Do you think it really goes on forever?’

Harold shook his head. ‘No, there’s other universes. Millions of them.’

‘And then what?’

‘I dunno. Can I come round to tea tomorrow?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘If your mum’s better, why can’t I?’

‘I’ll ask, OK.’

11

In the afternoon it was RE. The classroom had got really hot. Miss Swann’s boobs swung in her dress as she set out the painting stuff. Her hair, which was grey, even though she was quite young, had gone all frizzy.

‘So we’re all going to do a painting of something we’ve learned about Hinduism.’ There were drops of sweat glistening on her top lip. ‘Put on your overalls, please. Isiah. What are you going to paint?’

‘The burning bodies!’ said Isiah, with relish, and everyone started talking. They’d been doing Hinduism all term: the Diwali festival, some of the gods, the idea of karma and reincarnation, the Om symbol. It was Pearl who had told them about the dead bodies, burning beside the River Ganges. She’d seen them on a trip to India with her family.

‘The burning bodies. Cool. Anyone else? What about the Diwali festival?’ Miss Swann was setting out the paints and the water pots. She sounded tired.

‘Their melting faces!’ shouted Isiah. ‘And their skulls, cracking open!’ All the laughing and shrieking made it feel even hotter.